CHESAPEAKE — A teen charged with beating his parents to death with a sledgehammer at the family’s home in January 2023 will stand trial as an adult, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Donald Dyer, now 17, was 15 when his parents were bludgeoned in their trailer home off Campostella Road. A K-9 officer found the thin, small-statured teen under a highway overpass carrying bags of clothing a short time later. He’s been held in a juvenile detention facility on two counts of aggravated murder since then.
One of the first officers to arrive that day testified Tuesday in Chesapeake Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court about the gruesome scene.
Donna Daugherty, 61, was found covered in blood on her bed. Her husband, John Daugherty, 60, was on the floor next to her. Both had significant injuries to their heads. At the foot of the bed was a large sledgehammer. A serrated knife was on the floor. Blood splatters covered the walls and curtains.
Dyer’s half-sister Marina Daugherty testified she woke up sometime between 6 and 6:30 a.m. and was surprised that her father hadn’t woken her earlier. As she walked to her parents’ room, she noticed the light was on in Dyer’s room, which she said was unusual because he typically was the last to get up.
“I found my mom on the bed with a bunch of blood everywhere,” Daugherty testified. “I found my dad face-down on the floor. I freaked out, which woke up my sister.”
Daugherty said she saw another hammer on the floor in the hallway outside her parent’s room. Her brother was nowhere to be found, she said.
The night before had been fairly typical, Daugherty said. After eating dinner, the family watched television in the living room. Sometime between 8 and 9 p.m., Daugherty said she went to let their dogs out and noticed her father’s tool box was on the porch. The drawer that he kept hammers in was pulled out and seemed to have fewer than usual in it, she said.
The next day, Dyer was scheduled to begin attending an alternative school after having gotten caught with alcohol at school in late November, Daugherty said. His parents had taken his cellphone away from him, and placed other restrictions on him, she said.
Before going to bed that night, her father told Dyer how disappointed he was with him, she said.
“My dad was saying, ‘I want more for you. I expect more from you.’ That kind of thing,” Daugherty testified.
A Chesapeake police forensic examiner testified he examined Dyer’s laptop and found that it had been used to search ways to kill someone quickly and quietly. The searches occurred shortly after 4 a.m. the day of the slayings, and included questions about how to slit a person’s neck, and how to knock them out with one blow.
While Dyer has no previous criminal record, his school discipline record was significant, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Peterson told Judge David Whitted. It dated back to when Dyer was in the fourth grade, when he’d created a “kill list” and threatened to kill others, Peterson said.
Whitted ruled that prosecutors had presented enough evidence to establish probable cause. He also agreed with Peterson that due to the serious nature of the offense, and the evidence suggesting that it was premeditated, Dyer should stand trial as an adult. The teen, however, will remain in juvenile detention while he awaits trial.
State law used to require all juveniles ages 14 and older who are charged with murder or aggravated malicious wounding be tried as an adult. The statute was changed by the General Assembly in 2020, however, and now it’s up to a judge to decide whether prosecutors can seek to have juveniles ages 14 and 15 tried in adult court. Teens aged 16 and 17 charged with the same offenses still automatically go to adult court, so long as a juvenile court judge rules there’s probable cause to proceed.
Jane Harper, jane.harper@pilotonline.com
